THE - REAL - SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS IN MYANMAR

Below is an email I sent to my family and friends after I returned from Myanmar.

THE - REAL - SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS IN MYANMAR

Many thanks to everyone who has written, called, and emailed me about Myanmar and expressed anxiety about my friends there and about the country. Most of my friends were involved in the demonstrations and have emailed very graphic details about the up-rising. There are several we have not heard from and we are concerned.

Having traveled to Myanmar many times and having recently returned from there I will give you some insight into what is going on.

Myanmar Currently:

Myanmar has an appalling brutal government, army controlled, and needs a new one, like NOW! The time for the army to return to the barracks is long past due. The situation is highly complex and not as simplistic nor naïve as the American and British press would have you believe. [Sounds like the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq]

+ Myanmar has one of the largest natural gas fields in the world, and one of the world’s largest un-tapped oil fields. [Now you can see why the US and British governments are again trying their “regime change? You would have thought they learned their lesson in Iraq!]

+ Myanmar is made up of eight major different nationalities. Most of these different nationalities have fought for years for their own independent country. Currently the only thing holding the country together is, unfortunately, the Myanmar Army. The army has had good success in economically uniting the country, and hopefully this will form the basis for a political unity in the future.

+ Political progress has been stalled because of several reasons. First, the army officers do not want to give up their privileged positions. Second, insistent demands from Britain and America that “their candidate” MUST installed as president. Third, many Myanmar citizens who do not want the army also do not want the West’s puppet either. This includes a newly forming educated middle class, professionals, and many younger army officers.

+ The American and British’s nominee [In Myanmar you hear the word puppet!] to head this Asian country is a woman named Aung San Suu Kyi. She spent a major part of her life in Britain, was married to a British man until he died a couple of years ago, and she raised her children in Britain. She suddenly appeared in Myanmar in the late 1980s with plenty of money and support from the West and won a presidential election. Many of the educated people in Myanmar suspect that Aung San Suu Kyi is a member of British Intelligence or the CIA. They always point to the current American puppet in Iraq as proof.

+ The recent problems commenced as a protest against a giant increase in fuel prices imposed by the government. This was a grass roots demonstration started and led by several people not affiliated with Aung San Suu Kyi and her London based party. At first the demonstrations were tolerated but when Aung San Suu Kyi’s group started infiltrating the demonstrations and a decision was made by the group’s leaders to stop the demonstration.

+ The second set of demonstrations was lead by Buddhist monks. This choice of the Monks taking the lead, long predicted by Myanmar scholars, was again an effort to provide an “all Myanmar” solution to the problem by sideline Aung San Suu Kyi and her Western patrons.

Myanmar Background:

+ In 1990, with British and American backing, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party won the election. Many people in Myanmar voted for her because they were tired of army rule and mismanagement and there was no one else to vote for. Some national groups voted for her but had plans to assassinate her so they could declare their independence. [Just last month one of the Kachin rebel leaders told me, “Let the Americans put Suu Kyi in power. If the Shan don’t get her first we will!”]

In 1990 the Generals would not allow Aung San Suu Kyi’s to take power and they have continued their mismanagement of the country. Since that time the British and the American have tried to foster an almost cult-like devotion to Aung San Suu Kyi, sometime even calling her “Miss” Suu Kyi, or “The Lady”. Recently she has become the ‘darling’ of the right wing in the United States which promotes sanctions rather than engagement as a solution to removing the army. This at the same time when more and more scholars in the West are pointing out that sanctions do not work and in fact may help the army stay in power in Myanmar. Sanctions limit the growth of a middle class which is always the group within a country that demands change and a say in the policies that affect them. People in Myanmar are saying the same thing always pointing out that contacts with the outside world through tourism, education, business and trade promotes change and provides new ideas of how this change can be instituted. Thant Myint-U, the grandson of the former United Nations Secretary-General U Thant recently published a book, Rivers of Lost Footsteps, which elaborated on this very issue. His book got a very cold reception in the United States because he did not support a violent bloody US - British style overthrow, i.e. a “regime change”.

Current Opinions in Myanmar and in Asia:

Many of the educated people in Myanmar believe that the powerful and persistent demand by Britain and the Americans that their candidate Aung San Suu Kyi is only single solution to all the problems in Myanmar only complicates the whole issue, and is delaying the removal of the army from the government. Many Myanmar scholars and many Asian intellectuals view Aung San Suu Kyi as a problem, not as a solution for the future of the country. They resent a number of things about her:

First, her long time ties and continued bonds with Britain, the colonial power which invaded and occupied Myanmar for 123 years.

Second, many people in Myanmar see British racism in their support of Aung San Suu Kyi. One Buddhist monk said to me that the British liked Aung San Suu Kyi because of the racist saying: “She married white, so she’s alright”

Third, Aung San Suu Kyi comes from the Burmese nationality which was the ethnic group the British the co-opted and give privileged status to during their long colonial occupation of Myanmar. The Burmese are hated by the other nationalities in Myanmar. Many in Myanmar suspect that she only wants to return the old colonial Burmese ruling class to power.

Fourth, Aung San Suu Kyi’s father, then the president of Myanmar, instituted a policy of ethnic cleansing against the other seven nationalities. He sent the army into areas where they burnt whole villages and shot everyone they saw; whole families, students in schools, etc. [Scholars debate who was the worst: Aung San Suu Kyi’s father or the British during colonial occupation.]

Fifth, Aung San Suu Kyi’s own writings about Myanmar read almost feudal. Often she implies that she would do the same things that the army is currently doing only she wants to be the one in power doing it!

Sixth, many of the younger people in the larger cities blame Aung San Suu Kyi for a poor economy because of the West’s sanctions, and they see this as limiting their own future. In September I met with a group of university students, all from the Burmese ethnic group, supposedly Aung San Suu Kyi’s base, but they all were denouncing her just for this reason. This belief, held by many, is borne out by economic data from before America’s sanctions and currently.

Seventh, probably the strongest anger against the West is that the West has not in the past, and does not seem willing in the future, to provide any help overthrowing the army unless it involves Aung San Suu Kyi.

Eighth, some people in Myanmar, including many students, harbor the suspicion that the British and the Americans do want Myanmar broken into several smaller countries as it would be easier to steal the natural resources. British colonial past certainly give weight to this belief.

So now, sadly, it seems that the country has returned to the same stalemate.

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